September 7, 1571: Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk is arested for his role in the Ridolfi Plot.

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4th Duke of Norfolk, Elizabeth Tudor, Mary I of Scotland, Mary Stuart, Pope Pius V, Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland, Ridolfi Plot, Thomas Howard

The Ridolfi plot was a plot in 1571 to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I of England and replace her with Mary I, Queen of Scots. The plot was hatched and planned by Roberto Ridolfi, an international banker who was able to travel between Brussels, Rome and Madrid to gather support without attracting too much suspicion.

Background

Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth’s and the wealthiest landowner in the country, had been proposed as a possible husband for Mary I, Queen of Scots since her imprisonment in 1568. This suited Norfolk, who had ambitions and felt Elizabeth persistently undervalued him. In pursuit of his goals, he agreed to support the Northern Rebellion, though he quickly lost his nerve. Norfolk was imprisoned in the Tower of London for nine months and only freed under house arrest when he confessed all and begged for mercy. Pope Pius V, in his 1570 papal bull Regnans in Excelsis, excommunicated the Protestant Elizabeth and permitted all faithful Catholics to do all they could to depose her. The majority of English Catholics ignored the bull, but in response to it, Elizabeth became much harsher towards Catholics and their sympathisers.

Plot

Roberto Ridolfi, a Florentine banker and ardent Catholic, had been involved in the planning of the Northern rebellion and had been plotting to overthrow Elizabeth as early as 1569. With the failure of the rebellion, he concluded that foreign intervention was needed to restore Catholicism and bring Mary to the English throne, and so he began to contact potential conspirators. Mary’s advisor, John Lesley, the Bishop of Ross, gave his assent to the plot as the way to free Mary.

The plan was to have the Duke of Alba invade from the Netherlands with 10,000 men, foment a rebellion of the northern English nobility, murder Elizabeth, and marry Mary to Thomas Howard. Ridolfi optimistically estimated half of all English peers were Catholic and could muster in excess of 39,000 men. Norfolk gave verbal assurances to Ridolfi that he was Catholic, though as a pupil of John Foxe, he remained a Protestant all his life. Both Mary and Norfolk, desperate to remedy their respective situations, agreed to the plot. With their blessing, Ridolfi set off to the Continent to gain Alba, Pius V, and King Felipe II of Spain’s support.

List of co-conspirators

Ridolfi’s co-conspirators, some of them mentioned above, played an important role in the plot to overthrow Elizabeth:

Don Guerau de Espés: Spain’s ambassador to England, who was expelled after the discovery of his involvement. Elizabeth had raised her concerns about de Espés’ behaviour with Anna of Austria.

John Lesley: the Bishop of Ross, who was Mary Stuart’s chief agent; he arranged meetings and delivered letters for Mary during her house arrest.

Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, who was Queen Elizabeth I’s second cousin. He was to marry Mary Queen of Scots and together with her restore Catholic rule to the English and Scottish thrones. After the plot was discovered he was given a day-long trial that ended with his execution.

Mary, Queen of Scots: after it became clear that Elizabeth I was not going to restore her to the Scottish throne or return her to France, Mary plotted for her freedom. She wrote to Ridolfi denouncing the French and soliciting Spanish aid, while simultaneously professing friendship and loyalty to Elizabeth I and England. Giving her consent to the plot in March 1571, her role was to marry the Duke of Norfolk, with the plan that when the troops arrived in London she would be returned to the Scottish throne. However, when the plot was uncovered, her deep involvement in it altered Elizabeth’s opinion of Mary; Elizabeth never spoke of restoring her to the throne again.

King Felipe II of Spain, who welcomed Ridolfi to court and, with the council, discussed the plot’s pros and cons. He supported overthrowing Elizabeth and later came to support the assassination. Felipe, however, disapproved of the papal bull against Elizabeth because, according to Cyril Hamshere, he feared it would “prompt Elizabeth to take reprisals against Catholics.”

Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba, who was the leader of the Spanish army stationed in the Netherlands and was to lead more than 10,000 men to Harwich or Portsmouth. His army was to invade England and make its way to London to establish Mary on the throne, while either detaining or assassinating Elizabeth I.

Pope Pius V, who made Ridolfi his papal agent in England in 1567. Pius was not only aware of the plot but gave his written approval in a letter for Ridolfi to take to Felipe II.

Discovery

In 1571, Elizabeth’s intelligence network was sending her information about a plot against her life. By gaining the confidence of Spain’s ambassador to England, John Hawkins learned the details of the conspiracy and notified the government so as to arrest the plotters. Elizabeth was also sent a private warning by Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who had learned of the plot against her. Charles Baillie, Ridolfi’s messenger, was arrested on about April 12, 1571 at Dover for carrying compromising letters, and by the use of torture and prison informers such as William Herle, he was forced to reveal the cipher of the messages he carried.

On August 29, 1571, Norfolk’s secretaries William Barker and Robert Higford entrusted to Thomas Browne, a Shrewsbury draper, what was purported to be a bag of silver coin for delivery to Laurence Bannister, one of Norfolk’s officials in the north of England. Browne grew suspicious of the bag’s weight, opened it, and discovered 600 pounds in gold from the French ambassador, destined for Scotland on Mary’s behalf, and ciphered letters.

Because he knew Norfolk was under suspicion, Browne reported his find to William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, the Secretary of State. Higford and Barker were interrogated, the letters were partly deciphered, and a search for the cipher key at Howard House uncovered a ciphered letter from Mary Stuart hidden under a doormat.

Norfolk’s servants were arrested and interrogated, and confessions were extracted from them by threats or application of torture. Sir Thomas Smith and Thomas Wilson were sent to confront Norfolk, who claimed the money was for his own private purposes. The deciphered letter, however, proved that he was lying. Unaware of his servants’ confessions or the survival of letters which, contrary to his instructions, had not been burnt, he denied the charges against him.

On September 7, the queen’s warrant for conveying him to the Tower of London arrived. Thereupon, the duke admitted a degree of involvement in the transmission of money and correspondence to Mary’s Scottish supporters. In January 1572, Norfolk was tried and convicted on three counts of high treason, and on June 2, he was beheaded on Tower Hill.
Guerau de Spes, the Spanish ambassador, was expelled from the country in January 1571. Still abroad when the plot was discovered, Ridolfi never returned to England; he became a Florentine senator in 1600.

Ridolfi’s role

Despite his plot’s ultimate failure, Roberto Ridolfi’s story is surprising and memorable. He’d played the relatively minor role of banker but nevertheless found himself at the centre of a major plot to overthrow the English government. Ridolfi had been jailed in 1568 because of a rumour that he had distributed money to dissenting nobles associated with the Northern Rebellion.

The Pope did, in fact, give him 12,000 crowns for that purpose, but Ridolfi was released in 1570 because no evidence could be found to incriminate him. Even after his arrest and release, Ridolfi remained a spy for the Pope. Ridolfi’s banking connections helped him become acquainted with the Duke of Norfolk, and he became a supporter of a marriage between Norfolk and Mary, Queen of Scots, who would, if the plot succeeded, rule England and reinstate Catholicism there.

After Norfolk’s release from prison in August 1570, Ridolfi “picked up the broken threads of Catholic intrigue”. Ridolfi was in an advantageous position to orchestrate a Catholic rebellion in England, since he was employed by the Pope, France, and Spain, and had ties to the Catholic contingent in England. He could use banking as an excuse to travel among these groups for the purpose of conspiring. When he travelled to mainland Europe to King Felipe II and the Pope of the plot, it is believed that he was still working for Elizabeth.

The Duke of Alba, the Spanish Viceroy in the Netherlands who was to lead the attack on England, felt Ridolfi was too garrulous to be the leader of a conspiracy, but Spanish Ambassador Don Guerau de Spes described Ridolfi as “A person of great truth and virtue and an intimate friend of mine.” Ridolfi’s talkative nature did eventually cause him trouble, as he was not very discreet and trumpeted his plan all over Europe. His boasting was partially responsible for the plot’s failure, as he told it to Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany who immediately informed Elizabeth of the plot. Ridolfi escaped execution, unlike some of his co-conspirators, and lived until 1612.

Modern criticism

According to historian Cyril Hamshere, retrospective critics of the conspiracy cited a number of reasons why the Ridolfi Plot would have been doomed to fail even if it had not been discovered prematurely. For one, the small number of Spanish soldiers (between 6000–10,000) would have been absurdly inadequate to the task of overthrowing the English government. Additionally, the vagueness of the invasion point was a logistical shortcoming.

The plan was to land at either Harwich or Portsmouth, but Ridolfi apparently did not know exactly where Harwich was. Also dubious was Ridolfi’s reliance on the Duke of Norfolk, who was regarded as a bad leader and was not even a Catholic. This did not make him an ideal co-conspirator, but, according to Hamshere, “his main merit lay in his title: in 1571 he was the only Duke in England”.

Norfolk’s Protestantism was but one irony of the Ridolfi Plot: Norfolk and Mary I, Queen of Scots had each been married three times before their proposed marriage to each other. Pope Pius was, apparently, willing to grant Mary an annulment of her marriage to her imprisoned husband, but the notion of two thrice wed royals leading England back to Catholicism is somewhat problematic, nonetheless.

History of Male British Consorts Part II

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1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, 1st Duke of Somerset, Edward Seymour, Elizabeth I of England and Ireland, Elizabeth Tudor, Henry VIII. Catherine Parr, Lord Protector of England, Thomas Seymour

It may seem odd to include Queen Elizabeth I of England in this series given the fact that she he never married and no husband ever became consort. However, I would like to examine the possibilities of why she never married because the role of a male consort may have played a part why she chose not to marry.

Eizabeth I ( September 7, 1533 – March 24, 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from November 17, 1558 until her death in 1603. Sometimes called the Virgin Queen, Gloriana or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the last of the five monarchs of the House of Tudor.

Whom she would marry occupied the many politicians when she was in her youth. As she grew older, Elizabeth became celebrated for her virginity. A cult of personality grew around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants, and literature of the day. Elizabeth’s reign became known as the Elizabethan era.

Henry VIII died in 1547 and Elizabeth’s half-brother, Edward VI, became king at age nine. Catherine Parr, Henry VIII’s widow, soon married Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley.

Thomas Seymour was a brother of Lady Jane Seymour, third wife of Henry VIII and therefore an uncle to the young king Edward VI. Thomas Seymour was also brother of the Lord Protector, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset. The former Queen Catherine and her husband took Elizabeth into their household at Chelsea.

While living there Elizabeth experienced sexual harassment and a an emotional crisis that some historians believe affected her for the rest of her life. Thomas Seymour, aged about 39 years at the time, engaged in romps and horseplay with the 14-year-old Elizabeth, including entering her bedroom in his nightgown, tickling her, and slapping her on the buttocks.

Elizabeth rose early and surrounded herself with maids to avoid his unwelcome morning visits. Catherine Parr, rather than confront her husband over his inappropriate activities, joined in. Twice she accompanied him in tickling Elizabeth, and once held her while he cut her black gown “into a thousand pieces”. However, after Catherine Parr discovered the pair in an intimate embrace, she ended this state of affairs. In May 1548, Elizabeth was sent away.

However, Thomas Seymour continued scheming to control the royal family and tried to have himself appointed the governor of the King’s person. When Catherinr Parr died after childbirth on September 5, 1548, he renewed his attentions towards Elizabeth, intent on marrying her.

Mistress Kat Ashley, who was fond of Thomas Seymour, sought to convince Elizabeth to take him as her husband. She tried to convince Elizabeth to write to Thomas and “comfort him in his sorrow”, but Elizabeth claimed that Thomas was not so saddened by her stepmother’s death as to need comfort.

In January 1549, Thomas was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower on suspicion of conspiring to depose his brither, the Dukr of Somerset as the Protector, and marry Lady Jane Grey to King Edward VI, and take Elizabeth as his own wife.

Elizabeth, living at Hatfield House, would admit nothing. Her stubbornness exasperated her interrogator, Sir Robert Tyrwhitt, who reported, “I do see it in her face that she is guilty”. Seymour was beheaded on March 20, 1549.

November 17, 1558: Death of Mary I, Queen of England and Ireland. Part III.

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Bloody Mary, Elizabeth Tudor, False Pregnancy, Felipe II of Spain, Kings and Queens of England, Mary I of England, Mary Tudor, Philip II of Spain, Queen Elizabeth I of England, Reginald Pole, Roman Catholic Church

Furthering the Tudor conquest of Ireland, under Mary and Felipe’s reign English colonists were settled in the Irish Midlands. Queen’s and King’s Counties (now Counties Laois and Offaly) were founded, and their plantation began. Their principal towns were respectively named Maryborough (now Portlaoise) and Philipstown (now Daingean).

In January 1556, Mary’s father-in-law the Emperor abdicated. Mary and Felipe were still apart; he was declared King of Spain in Brussels, but she stayed in England. King Felipe II negotiated an unsteady truce with the French in February 1556. The following month, the French ambassador in England, Antoine de Noailles, was implicated in a plot against Mary when Sir Henry Dudley, a second cousin of the executed Duke of Northumberland, attempted to assemble an invasion force in France. The plot, known as the Dudley conspiracy, was betrayed, and the conspirators in England were rounded up. Dudley remained in exile in France, and Noailles prudently left Britain.

Felipe II returned to England from March to July 1557 to persuade Mary to support Spain in a renewed war against France. Mary was in favour of declaring war, but her councillors opposed it because French trade would be jeopardised, it contravened the foreign war provisions of the marriage treaty, and a bad economic legacy from Edward VI’s reign and a series of poor harvests meant England lacked supplies and finances.

War was only declared in June 1557 after Reginald Pole’s nephew, Thomas Stafford, invaded England and seized Scarborough Castle with French help, in a failed attempt to depose Mary. As a result of the war, relations between England and the Papacy became strained, since Pope Paul IV was allied with Henri II of France.

In August, English forces were victorious in the aftermath of the Battle of Saint Quentin, with one eyewitness stating “Both sides fought most choicely, and the English best of all.” Celebrations however, were brief, as in January 1558 French forces took Calais, England’s sole remaining possession on the European mainland. Although the territory was financially burdensome, its loss was a mortifying blow to the queen’s prestige. According to Holinshed’s Chronicles, Mary later lamented, “When I am dead and opened, you shall find ‘Calais’ lying in my heart”, although this may be apocryphal.

After her husband Felipe II’s visit in 1557, Mary again thought she was pregnant, with a baby due in March 1558. She decreed in her will that her husband would be the regent during the minority of their child. However, no child was born, and Mary was forced to accept that her half-sister Elizabeth would be her lawful successor. Mary was weak and ill from May 1558.

In pain, possibly from ovarian cysts or uterine cancer, she died on November 17, 1558, aged 42, at St James’s Palace, during an influenza epidemic that also claimed the life of Reginald Pole later the same day. She was succeeded by Elizabeth. Felipe II, who was in Brussels, wrote to his sister Joan: “I felt a reasonable regret for her death.”

Although Mary’s will stated that she wished to be buried next to her mother, she was interred in Westminster Abbey on December 14, in a tomb she would eventually share with Elizabeth. The Latin inscription on their tomb, Regno consortes et urna, hic obdormimus Elizabetha et Maria sorores, in spe resurrectionis (affixed there by James I when he succeeded Elizabeth), translates to: “Consorts in realm and tomb, we sisters Elizabeth and Mary here lie down to sleep in hope of the resurrection.”
Legacy

At her funeral service, John White, bishop of Winchester, praised Mary: “She was a king’s daughter; she was a king’s sister; she was a king’s wife. She was a queen, and by the same title a king also.” She was the first woman to successfully claim the throne of England, despite competing claims and determined opposition, and enjoyed popular support and sympathy during the earliest parts of her reign, especially from the Roman Catholics of England.

Mary’s attempts to undo the national religious reforms of her brother’s reign faced major obstacles. Despite her belief in the papal supremacy, she ruled constitutionally as the Supreme Head of the English Church, a contradiction under which she bridled.

Protestant writers at the time, and since, have often condemned Mary’s reign. By the 17th century, the memory of her religious persecutions had led to the adoption of her sobriquet “Bloody Mary”. John Knox attacked her in his First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558), and she was prominently vilified in Actes and Monuments (1563), by John Foxe. Foxe’s book remained popular throughout the following centuries and helped shape enduring perceptions of Mary as a bloodthirsty tyrant.

Mary is remembered in the 21st century for her vigorous efforts to restore the primacy of Roman Catholicism in England after the rise of Protestant influence during the previous reigns. Protestant historians have long deplored her reign, emphasizing that in just five years she burned several hundred Protestants at the stake. In the mid-20th century, H. F. M. Prescott attempted to redress the tradition that Mary was intolerant and authoritarian, and scholarship since then has tended to view the older, simpler assessments of Mary with increasing reservations.

A historiographical revisionism since the 1980s has to some degree improved her reputation among scholars. Christopher Haigh argued that her revival of religious festivities and Catholic practices was generally welcomed. Haigh concluded that the “last years of Mary’s reign were not a gruesome preparation for Protestant victory, but a continuing consolidation of Catholic strength.”

Catholic historians, such as John Lingard, thought Mary’s policies failed not because they were wrong but because she had too short a reign to establish them and because of natural disasters beyond her control. In other countries, the Catholic Counter-Reformation was spearheaded by Jesuit missionaries, but Mary’s chief religious advisor, Cardinal Reginald Pole, refused to allow the Jesuits into England.

Her marriage to King Felipe II of Spain was unpopular among her subjects and her religious policies resulted in deep-seated resentment. The military loss of Calais to France was a bitter humiliation to English pride. Failed harvests increased public discontent. Philip spent most of his time abroad, while his wife remained in England, leaving her depressed at his absence and undermined by their inability to have children.

After Mary’s death, Felipe II sought to marry Queen Elizabeth but she refused him. Although Mary’s rule was ultimately ineffectual and unpopular, the policies of fiscal reform, naval expansion, and colonial exploration that were later lauded as Elizabethan accomplishments were started in Mary’s reign.